2018 board's £5m isn't in the net yet

The considerable matter of a £5million Government contribution to the England bid to host football’s 2018 World Cup could still derail all the campaign plans.

The FA have requested that scale of funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and are progressing with their two-year strategy building up to the FIFA vote in December 2010 in full anticipation that the money is coming.

So much so that, at the last meeting of the 2018 board of directors — who include Government envoy Richard Caborn and Minister for Sport Gerry Sutcliffe — there were no interruptions or objections when the bid staff presented a blueprint of how they intend to spend their £15m budget, a third of which they are banking on Whitehall providing.

Yet the DCMS have already warned the 2018 team that they cannot make any decision about World Cup bid funding until after the Chancellor’s Budget on April 22. In contrast, rivals Australia are receiving £22m of state support.

The serious concern for chief executive Andy Anson’s team is that the DCMS have been negative from the start about having to provide any money when football is such a cash-rich sport and knowing that others bidding for a World Cup, like rugby union, will also be chasing Government backing.

The MCC, who have done so much under the modern leadership of Keith Bradshaw over the last three years to shed their image as a dinosaur organisation, look like they want to re-invent the past with one of the proposals for the annual meeting in May.

That is to raise the maximum age for members of the MCC management committee from 70 to 75 just when more enlightened sporting bodies are doing the opposite. The proposer is former Tory Premier Sir John Major, of all people.

Ross Brawn can’t have too many financial worries about his fledgling Formula One racing team, bought recently from Honda, as he and his wife Jean flew first class to Australia ahead of the opening grand prix of the new season in Melbourne.

There is understandable concern among the FA’s major sponsors — led by National Express — at the lack of access they have to the current squad for promotional purposes in return for the huge seven-figure backing they give to English football’s ruling body.

England team sponsors Nationwide regularly have to resort to using England ‘legends’ of varying fame like Peter Shilton,

Gary Mabbutt, Martin Peters, Ray Wilkins and Matt Le Tissier — some of whom had retired from football before the 2009 team were born — for personal appearances to talk about present-day England matters.

One thing is for sure, the sponsors won’t be fobbed off with such a situation the next time the contracts are being negotiated.

Newcastle's own goal

Newcastle, a club in turmoil on and off the pitch, have surpassed themselves by banning journalist Alan Oliver from St James’ Park just days after he received a lifetime achievement award for the dignified way he devoted a career to covering the team for the Newcastle Evening Chronicle for more than 30 years.

The highly respected Oliver, now a pensioner working for a Sunday newspaper, was the co-author of a story speculating on sidelined manager Joe Kinnear’s health — a fair subject on Tyneside — which upset the board.

Their ridiculous over-the-top reaction against a newspaperman who has written more positive paragraphs about the football club than anyone says everything about the buffoons running Newcastle.

The financial crisis makes the bullying style of leading sports function auctioneers — such as Charlie Ross, Jeffrey Archer and Johnny Gould — totally out of kilter with these difficult times.

At the prestigious Lord’s Taverners’ eve of Calcutta Cup dinner there was certainly a feeling of unease among patrons, who may already have paid out plenty for their seats, at the way Ross embarrassed anyone who declined to carry on bidding.